Charlie Woods, PNC Championship show different Tiger

Odysseus and Telemachus; Marlin and Nemo; Jellybean and Kobe Bryant.

History, real and imagined, is so thick with fathers and sons that the temptation is to get carried away at the PNC Championship, where Tiger and Charlie Woods will be the headliners for the third straight year at the Ritz-Carlton Golf Club in Orlando.

The swings! The mannerisms! The outfits!

Hang on, though. Slow down. Tiger is just a man, and a hobbled one, at that. Charlie is just 13.

“I want him to enjoy whatever he’s doing,” Woods said in their first joint interview at the Notah Begay III Junior Golf National Championship in Kinder, Louisiana.

And there it is, the through line to which all else must adhere. Joy.

“Hey, Charlie, you gotta practice this,” Lee Trevino said last year while giving Team Woods an impromptu clinic on the PNC’s driving range. Trevino and Woods disagreed on who was the best-ever ball-striker, each citing the other, and at one point Woods doubled over laughing.

Tiger thinks a lot about fatherhood these days. Much of his induction speech into the World Golf Hall of Fame in March recalled how he snuck onto courses with his dad Earl to skirt the age-limit restrictions, and how Earl and Kultida took out a second mortgage so Tiger could travel the country to play American Junior Golf Association events.

His hopes this week? To feel well enough to play. That Charlie does well.

It’s different for Charlie. He wants to beat his friend Justin Thomas, who will play with his dad, Mike, who coaches Charlie and with whom Justin won the PNC Championship in 2020.

Oh, and Tiger and Charlie also wouldn’t mind winning.

Last year Team Woods made 11 straight birdies in the final round, finishing second to John Daly and John II. It was enjoyable for all. “The competitive juices, they are never going to go away,” Tiger said then. “This is my environment. This is what I’ve done my entire life. I’m just so thankful to be able to have this opportunity to do it again.”

They’ll do it again this weekend with the scramble format Saturday and Sunday. And we’ll watch. Old and Young Tom Morris. Jack and Gary Nicklaus. Craig and Kevin Stadler. Dave Stockton and Dave Stockton, Jr. Johnny and Andy Miller. Al and Brent Geiberger. Bill and Jay Haas. We warm to these stories, the perks (top instruction, optimized gear), challenges (unfair expectations, incessant scrutiny), and debate (nature versus nurture, DNA versus drive) always the same but not. Has any player ever labored under a shadow like the one cast by Tiger Woods?

The PNC is where we gather for all of it.

Charlie may have to carry Team Woods, what with Tiger battling plantar fasciitis in his right foot. He was rusty in The Match last week as he and FedExCup champ Rory McIlroy fell to the super-duo of Jordan Spieth and Justin Thomas. “Play hard, partner,” Woods said.

The 12-hole exhibition under the lights came a month after Charlie shot 72-69-71 for a 1-under total of 212 as he finished 11th in Louisiana. Tiger caddied.

“Get the misses tighter,” Charlie said of his golf goals. “Practice more. Just have fun.”

And would Tiger be a first-ballot Hall of Famer as a caddie?

“He forgot my putter a few times,” Charlie said. “That’s about it.”

Tiger didn’t miss much when enjoyment meant world domination. At his Hall of Fame speech, the winner of 82 PGA TOUR titles, 15 majors, said he remains conflicted about the famous Presidents Cup tie as darkness fell on South Africa … nearly two decades ago. But he’s softened as a dad even while indulging in the gamesmanship that his father visited upon him: the well-timed jangling of coins, ripping of Velcro, and/or clearing of throat.

“If I can get into his head,” Tiger said of Charlie, “that means someone else can get into his head. It’s going to get to a point where I can’t get into his head, and then no one else can.”

As a father, Tiger’s life is complicated by his celebrity. As a player it’s more complicated still. Intending to play in the recent Hero World Challenge, the tournament he hosts in the Bahamas, he took barefoot walks on sand, but it backfired, and he withdrew before the Hero even began.

Officially, Woods played just three times in 2022, making the cut at the Masters, making the cut but withdrawing with leg pain at the PGA Championship, and missing the cut by nine at The Open Championship. It was at St. Andrews, he said, that his leg basically stopped working.

He turned his attention to Charlie. During the Presidents Cup in September, when Woods could have been in the back room for U.S. Captain Davis Love III, he was carrying Charlie’s clubs as the kid posted a career-low 68 in a qualifier for the Begay III tournament.

That, along with managing the delicate titration of rest and rehab, is Tiger Woods on the verge of his 47th birthday on Dec. 30. Out: Just Win, Baby. In: Dad life. No shame in that. At the PNC, where Team Daly will defend, Team Trevino will lead the field in Strokes Gained: Merriment, and Team Woods will no doubt dazzle in their Sunday red, it’s the entire point.